Everything that’s wrong with the Left in one website. At City Journal, Oren Cass has written a short article that looks at modern Progressivism through the filter of Hillary’s campaign website. In some ways, the article says something we all know, which is that the modern Democrat party is not concerned about America’s well-being but, instead, is concerned only about its only survival, something it achieves by getting special interest groups to vote for it:

Framing issues as who instead of what leads to a governing model that would divide society by race, gender, sexuality, profession, and location, targeting policies to each defined demographic. A divide-and-conquer strategy may achieve electoral success, but it is toxic to good government. When politicians treat elections as exercises in log-rolling, each policy becomes tailored toward the special interest that cares about it most. Thus Clinton’s crime policy emphasizes a friendlier attitude toward criminals. Her immigration policy concerns itself primarily with helping those who have violated immigration law. Her education policy explicitly endorses the status quo for most students but promises to “listen to teachers.”

In a world of fixed resources, such a model inevitably undermines the idea of equal protection under the law, pits groups against one another, and leaves some explicitly favored by government as winners. It also normalizes subjective standards for government action. Clinton promises to extend President Obama’s executive actions on immigration to “additional persons with sympathetic cases.” Whatever one thinks of our immigration policies, tilting them toward “persons with sympathetic cases” does not suggest rigorous application of the law.

Black votes matter to many politicians — more so than black lives. That is why such politicians must try to keep black voters fearful, angry, and resentful. Racial harmony would be a political disaster for such politicians.

Racial polarization makes both the black population and the white population worse off, but it makes politicians who depend on black votes better off.

Hillary Clinton desperately needs black votes in this year’s close election. Promoting fear, anger, and resentment among blacks — and, if possible, paranoia — serves her political interest. Barack Obama has mastered the art of keeping black voters aroused while keeping white voters soothed — thanks in part to the gullibility of much of the public, who mistake geniality and glib rhetoric for honesty and good will.

The coup that wasn’t and the coup that could be. The more news that comes out of Turkey, the more I believe that what happened there was a coup in the same way that the Reichstag fire was a “coup” — it was a staged event that gave a despot the authority to wipe out the last of his opposition. I have no doubt that the soldiers who will be executed believed in what they were doing, but I also have no doubt that they were pushed into it like lambs to the slaughter by people on Erdogan’s payroll.

What made the coup an inevitable failure is that Erdogan spent years purging the military of secular leaders and replacing them with leaders sympathetic to his own political philosophy. We have a similar situation here at home.

Obama has spent years purging the American military of conservative leaders and replacing them with leaders who believe that the military’s primary goal isn’t defending America against her enemies but is, instead, to use it as a vehicle to promote the so-called “war against climate change” and gender madness, both to the detriment of military readiness. Meanwhile, on the home front, Obama has armed the federal civil service (a bastion of Left-leaning union members who had no problem using the IRS’s vast powers to silence conservatives in an election year) to the point at which they’re more heavily weaponized than the Marines. The only difference between a weaponized IRS, EPA, FCC, or FDA, on the one hand, and the Marines, on the other hand, is that I’d still bet my money on the Marines in hand-to-hand fighting.

A lot of people worry that, if Trump is rising in the polls, Obama will declare martial law at the end of October, either because of another terrorist attack by a member of the religion of “peace” or because of more outrages by the BLM movement. Two years ago, I would have scoffed. Today, I agree that this scenario is within the realm of possibility.

However, if Hillary is ahead in the polls, the election will go forward, and we’ll end up with the most corrupt woman in American political history having at her command an emasculated, left-Leaning military and a heavily armed bureaucracy at her beck and call. And honestly, if the next president has that kind of firepower, ask yourself this: Would you rather have Trump, who does love America, or Hillary, a hard-core Leftist, in control of that arsenal?

The best thing, of course, would be seeing the military return to its proper function and disarming our “civil” bureaucracy. That’s not going to happen soon, though, so we’ve got to go with what is, rather than what we wish could be.

I was on the phone with a friend when he suddenly started yelling, “Oh, my God! Oh, my God!” He had just received in his email a news bulletin announcing a military takeover in Turkey. First reports indicated that the takeover was led by mid-level military officers accusing the government of having destroyed secular democracy in Turkey. (An accurate accusation.) That there were no high-level officers is unsurprising, because Erdogan purged them all. That all sounded good.

Unfortunately, the takeover did not include Erdogan’s immediate execution. It appears now that he has rallied mobs and troops to his side and is putting down the revolt.

The al-Sisi moment may have passed . . . or maybe not. It’s a very volatile situation, one that, even if it calms down (no doubt with a great deal of post-coup repression) could flare up again at any time.

The only thing I can say with certainty is that Turkey is unstable and will not be a nice place of its citizens at any time in the near future.

What are your thoughts on the coup?

(Speaking of al-Sisi, just as Obama sided with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, in Turkey he’s siding with the sharia-promoting, Islamist Erdogan, who has worked to undo 90 years of secular democracy in Turkey. I can pretty much predict that, whatever Obama is for, I’m against it.)

Sadie tipped me off to two interesting articles, both of which concern Turkey (not the fowl food, but the increasingly foul Islamist nation).

The first notes a peculiar co-inky-dink: all of America’s policies since the 1990s have just coincidentally helped return to the Islamic fold myriad nations that were once part of the Islamic Ottoman Empire. That Empire, of course, shrank down to just Turkey, which was a secular state for decades.

The second points out that Turkey’s nascent renaissance as the New Ottoman Empire might be looking beyond its former borders. Turkey is now sponsoring a new mega-mosque in Maryland which, when done, will be the largest mosque in the West:

The massive facility, which will be called Turkish American Culture and Civilization Center, will span 15 acres and will feature five buildings, including a mosque “constructed using sixteenth century Ottoman architecture that can hold 750 worshipers.” It will be a place that will help counter an epidemic of “Islamophobia” in the United States, according to Turkish government officials who recently visited the construction site. The delegation was led by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose goals include increasing Islamist influence in America.

Inexplicably, the US Ambassador in Ankara seems to have endorsed the ruling AKP party in Turkey’s upcoming elections. This is inexplicable because the AKP is Islamist, anti-American and antisemitic (but other than that, it’s a great party). My multiple choice question for you:

(3) Is this an elaborate head fake that tries to trick an anti-America population into doing the opposite of what the Americans recommend (so that they’ll vote for the opposition party, not the American-recommended AKP)?

An Austrian MP has finally had enough of the way the Turkish government complains about the treatment Turks receive in Austria. I have no idea what kind of treatment Turks receive in Austria, although if it’s like the rest of Europe, they get welfare, and they do not integrate, both because the welfare keeps them out of the workforce and because Muslims don’t to integrate. Anyway, if you haven’t seen this yet, you’ll find it interesting:

All I can say is that this is one Austrian who’s had it up to here and beyond with political correctness. I know some are worried that it sounds like Hitler castigating the Jews, but I don’t see it that way. The fact that Hitler created and then destroyed a straw man, based only on shadowing conspiracy theories and paranoia, should not mean that all of us in the West are henceforth barred from speaking up against true evil: and to the extent any Islamist, whether a Turk or a Saudi or an America, openly advocates for (and tries to act upon that advocacy) the destruction of other nations, the subjugation of women, the murder of Jews, Christians and gays, and the world’s forcible conversion to Islam and governance under sharia law, we have an obligation to speak up, and we’re not Nazis for doing so.

I’ve mentioned that I use my “real” Facebook as a means, very politely and disingenuously, to challenge my liberal friend’s strident, usually unthinking, worldviews. (All some of them, I admit, are a lost cause, whom I keep as friends only for the amusement value.) Turns out I’m not the only one. Here are some techniques if you’d like to use facebook as a gentle means to return some of your lost liberal friends to the real world.

The Anchoress has a great memory. Back in 2004, when liberals lost, they went out of their way to make loud apologies to other Americans for failing to win the good fight to save the political world from Bush. This time around, they’re remarkably silent.

It’s not just that Obama is again loudly criticizing Israel (all the while managing to keep his mouth shut about Palestinian behavior). It’s that he uses a Muslim nation as the forum for his criticism. I can’t quite articulate it, but there’s something even lower than the usual low about doing that.

Union bosses are content to kill the goose that lays the golden egg (that would be the American economy, by the way). Union rank and file is, apparently, less thrilled about that short-sighted approach to their lives and livelihoods.

I’m worried that we’re showing hubris by getting all excited about Pelosi’s decision to retain her leadership status. (Here’s an example from Roger Simon, whose writing is always so delicious.) Nancy is vile. Nancy is dishonest. Nancy is intellectually stupid. Nancy is all that. But she’s also got a feral knack for manipulating people (aided, no doubt, by her dishonesty), and I have no doubt that the core players (Soros, the Chicago people) are behind her move because they think it will benefit them. I don’t know how it will benefit them, but I’m neither manipulative nor dishonest. We should certainly feel free to laugh, but I’d still keep my hand on my weapons around that woman.

I’ve been trying to explain to my kids all the reasons I despite the UN. (This is a subject that comes up annually, because I refuse to give “coins to UNICEF.”) Here’s a good, albeit merely symbolic reason, for loathing that antisemitic tyranny that elevates every tin-pot dictator to meaningful power, all of it aimed against Israel.

Oh, and here’s a good article about what constitutes real “progress.” (By the way, how many old school Democrats do you think appreciate the way they’re now classified as “Progressives,” which is an entirely different political animal. For all its whining about its inability to communicate over right wing noise, the Left is miraculously adept at manipulating language.) (H/t New Editor)